


As the Crow Flies

by Hollow_Fan_Soul_55



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Barbara Gordon is Oracle, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Cassandra Cain is Black Bat, Crows, Damian Wayne is Robin, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Stephanie Brown is Batgirl, Tim Drake is not a conventional part of the Batfamily, Tim Drake was never Robin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-02-15 18:33:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18675178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hollow_Fan_Soul_55/pseuds/Hollow_Fan_Soul_55
Summary: …Small changes can make giant ripples……*……A few feathers can lift someone up…*After all*That’s what happened in Gotham. A small change that sparked a new vigilante for her shadows as dark as the black wings They fly on.*It’s famed that evenBatmandoesn’t know who Crow is under Their mask.*Tim Drake has always wanted to help but never knew how to. He was just little ol' Tim. But he found his way, no matter how unconventional. His family is there to help him when he’s feeling down.*Mostly stories of Crow/Tim with Their/his birds.





	1. Lore It Over Me, Cackle Like It Makes You Free

_The Crow_ is a mysterious figure, even within the Gotham community.

Sure, Penguin has his penguins, Catwoman has her cats, Harley has her two hyenas, and let it not be said that the little Robin doesn’t have his fair share of creatures.

Even Poison Ivy has her plants.

But Crow?

Those birds are Their eyes and ears, more so than even Ivy’s plants. Crow watches over Gotham day and night, Their birds returning with valuable information, tidbits, and locations by the dozens at all hours.

Some think Crow doesn’t sleep at all. How can They, when all of Gotham knows you’re never safe from Their crows? The good, mundane, or wicked. There’s no way for you to hide from these birds, and those who have tried went mad…well, mad _der._

Soon, after a few years of Crow’s dedicated and consistent activity (starting not long after the first Robin began to become Batman’s bright shadow), it wasn’t unheard of for Big Bads or even civilians to have their own murder of crows or individual following after them for one reason or another.

A few of the lighter-hearted civilians and even criminals give their birds names, sending back well-wishes to Crow, occasionally, and birthday presents for each of them.

But make no mistake; hurt one of _Their_ birds, and you won’t live to see another sunrise. It always looks as if by accident or chance, but those privy know well that isn’t the case.

Well, maybe that is a bit dramatic — never say it isn’t in Gothamite blood to be.

The Crow can pull many strings, and They will lord it over you until Their birds forgive you. And crows hold grudges and will remember, so you’ll never be forgiven. You’ll be ostracized and cast away from the whole of Gotham.

Good luck getting even a shifty ‘sudden opening’ for Professor Pyg if you do.

Especially when, due to Crow’s attention on interesting individuals, Their crows love their chosen humans. If you harm the wrong person’s crow, you might get more than _just_ Crow’s ire.

Not even the Bat and his birds dare. Some have accepted more openly than others.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
*  
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^| A gift worth GOLD |^

Tim glances up at the sound of sharp tapping at his window, a smile tugging involuntary at his lips at what he finds.

“Hey, Tula {pronounced T-oo-la},” he calls, pulling the window open after sliding over. “What do you have for me this morning?”

Tula hops onto his desk, ruffling his feathers as Tim scritches his head with his pointer finger. In his beak hangs a single scrap of brilliant golden cloth shimmering in the faint light of his bedside lamp.

Cloth Tim would recognize if he were _blind._

He gapes, gently pulling it from Tula’s beak while absentmindedly handing him a grape from off his nearly-empty plate.

Tula brought him a piece of Robin’s cape. The _Dick Grayson’s_ cape! And inscribed on the underside are nine words that shake Tim’s world: Happy 2 Year Anniversary, Crow! Give Roma a treat for me!

“Oh my god!” Tim breathes. Tula just clicks his beak in response and flies back outside with a satisfying taking of a second grape. As if he knew Robin gave him permission.

“You can’t just _leave_ me with this with no explanation, mister!!” Tim cries, throwing his arm out the window to waggle the cloth violently in the open air.

Ream {pronounced R-ee-m} lands on his windowsill and tilts her head to the side instead of Tula returning to explain himself. Jerk.

Tim hangs his head in defeat, slumping down to the point he’s draped half-out the window. “Your brother is trying to kill me,” he tells her solemnly. She warbles back, looking all too much like she’s going “don’t I know it” as she runs his hair through her beak with gentle tugs.

In the distance, he can hear Tula cackling.


	2. Blood On Your Hands, Blood On My Face…This Is MY Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crow always seem to be one step ahead of everyone else.
> 
> When They first appeared (other than their untraceable tips and birds, that is) physically before one of the Batfamily members, it was actually in Titans Tower when Red Hood attacked the current Robin of the time, Stephanie Brown.
> 
> Red Hood meets The Crow and for once someone is on his side.
> 
> _Now if he would just get a straight answer already!_

Red Hood stumbles back away from a flurry of talons scraping his lenses, swatting his hand around. “Fu–!”

“You know,” an unfamiliar voice says dryly, cutting his curse off. Red Hood ducks and leaps back with his hand leveling his gun forward as he squints past the deep scratches to see a figure kneeling over the Replacement.

A figure that _definitely_ wasn’t there a few seconds ago, and not even in the room when he locked the tower down.

Fucking hell!

His finger automatically rests on the trigger…but then _they_ catch his eye. Giant crows sit perched atop the destroyed furniture, each head cocked and trained on him. They all keep watching him as the figure stays turned away, but as the figure stands up, one bird in particular swoops down onto the outstretched arm.

_Jason_ would recognize that bird anywhere.

_Trinket._ **His** crow from when he was Robin.

She caws at him, flapping her large wings angrily while snapping her beak and clicking at him. She always did that when he got in over his head, always hopping after him on missions and watching him train in the cave.

The figure runs a hand down her back steadily, posture relaxed even as the dozen other crows take up the call around the room agitated flapping and hops across their perches. The figure raises a hand slightly, and the sound cuts completely besides the soft click of talons and beaks as they shift.

Well…shit.

“When Pep {pronounced P-eh-p} came to me, looking the happiest I’ve seen in a long time, I wondered, ‘why the sudden change?’” The figure, man or woman he couldn’t tell, shifted on Their feet. They sounded resigned. Tired. “Then she led me here and I found you.”

“You’re Crow,” Red Hood states, dropping his gun to his side and his stance only slightly, trying to ignore ~~Pep~~ Trinket’s black eyes burning into him. Focusing more on the shorter, lean body in front of him. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be. Smaller, too.”

“And you’re more alive than I thought you were,” Crow quips casually. But all Jason can do is freeze, his blood-chilling as his finger twitches down on the trigger.

Crow smirks, looking bitter. They tilt Their head to the side, saying “You’re one of those that have one of mine in particular latch onto them. She would recognize you anywhere, mask or no mask, even a few years forced apart.”

**_No…no way……!_ **

“I’ve known for years.” Crow says nonchalantly, as if most people wouldn’t kill for that information. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to spill any of your secrets now. I would’ve done it a long time ago if that were the plan.”

Crow lifts Their arm holding Trinket sharply, of whom takes to the air and lands on Jason’s shoulder lightly. She clicks and bites at his fingers when he tries to greet her, so he keeps his hand down and tries to not feel hurt.

“And why are you here? You’re a long way from Gotham, ain’t ya.”

“A few reasons, actually,” Crow says. “Copper {pronounced Cah-purr} picked up disturbing pings — distressing phrases, sounds, and I was in the area. I knew someone was attacking Robin, and–”

“She’s _not_ Robin!” Jason growls, fist clenching.

Trinket caws loudly in his ear, pecking at the side of his helmet. Jason pauses, putting his foot back down from where he had been taking a step forward. Right, she might have been his bird, but she is Their crow first and foremost.

“Isn’t she, though?” Crow asks, completely at ease. “She worked just as hard, maybe harder, to become Robin after you.”

They raise their hand to keep Jason from snarling, and he — for some reason or another, listens.

“Thank you,” Crow sighs, shifting around to kneel back by the Replacement, nudging a frantically hopping crow off her chest. Jason sees now that They’re bandaging her wounds; she’s still unconscious. He’s pretty proud, actually. “For letting me continue. And for the record, all the cameras in the room are disabled if you want to properly see what’s going on in the room. Pep left her mark.”

Jason sighs, reluctantly tugging off his helmet with as much dramatic flair as he can. They —Crow, that is— have never lied before. Jason doesn’t see why They would start now.

He lets it hang in his hand, taking a deep breath of unfiltered air. It’s heavy with blood, but the ability to see outweighs that. He’s used to blood anyway.

Jason gets a good look, for the first time, at Crow. Trinket is no help from where she’s fluffing up on his shoulder. She looks as smug as a bird can, which is pretty smug. It almost makes him smile from the memories of his time in the tiny short.

Of course, his bond with Trinket is all because of Crow.

And oh, how funny it is that They really are much shorter than Jason, reaching only his shoulder. They’re dressed in kevlar, which seems to be standard vigilante attire by this point, and even have a cowl to boot. It’s black or seriously dark grey, curved round over Their chest with intricate lines of navy blues and deep purple along the fingers and under Their throat.

They have a black cape that rests over Their shoulders and sways by Their knees, golden thread woven in. This extends to Their boots, that have dull golden talons curving slightly over the toes.

“So, why shouldn’t I kill her here and now?” Jason demands.

Crow runs a finger under Their eye, smearing some of Replacement’s blood there before jerking it down. “Two reasons. One, Copper would kill you,” the crow formerly on Replacement’s chest hisses viciously. “And two; because I have days worth of observations you’ll want to see before you do something you would regret. Who gave you your information?”

“Talia–”

Crow snaps Their head up, “al Ghul,” They finish with a hiss, startling Jason. Trinket squaws and switches shoulders. “I should’ve known. They fed you what they needed to get you on their plan, excluding everything else. Meet in Gotham, I’ll find you. If I can’t meet personally, I’ll send one of mine. The code will be _Pep is Trinket._ ”

They stride across the room, pressing their hand against the glass without another word. It pulls out in a large circle that They set delicately on the ground. “Now, if you don’t want to be caught by a very pissed off Bat, I’d get out of here in less than three minutes.”

They don’t even wait for a response, throwing Themself out of the window of the fiftieth floor with no way to possibly grapple.

Jason rushes over after the murder of crows that scatter out after Crow, watching with an open mouth as Crow grabs the edges of the cape, tightening it, and a small blue glow bursts from between Their shoulder blades as They’re shot across the ocean.

They can fucking fly.

Trinket caws loudly in his ear. It has never sounded more mocking than it did now.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
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*  
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Jason gets to his most secret safe house, collapses on the couch with Trinket perched on his counter with a bowl of assorted fruits, seconds before there’s a knock at his door.

He opens it to find a boy with a backpack hitched over his shoulder and a fucking _massive,_ scrappy crow on his black-haired head. Fucking good thing that crows are allowed inside all buildings after Gothamites realized more and more people were bonding with them and there was no way to keep them out.

“Pep is Trinket,” the boy states, blue eyes like glass burning into his own. “Now let me inside.”

Jason glares, “And who, exactly, are you?!”

The boy sighs harshly, blowing the bangs on the side of his head out of his eye, pushing his way into the apartment. “My name is Tim, this is Dove {pronounced Duh-ve}.”

……Trinket and Dove greet each other on Tim like old friends. Jason shuts his door and groans.


	3. Sour First Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim is tired, stretched thin, and just had to patched up Robin from possibly fatal injuries from his fourth idol after he hurt Tim’s fifth…and now he has to interact with him to hopefully clear things up between these emotionally stunted children.
> 
> Jason gets the brunt of this stress.

Tim, Jason finds out rather quickly, is fucking annoying.

He walks around Jason’s apartment like he’s lived there for years, and he hasn’t said a thing for five minutes. I mean, shit, it’s not like Jason wasn’t used to silences with Bruce brooding, but it’s really starting to piss Jason off thanks to those memories of cheering him up.

“Oi, fucker!” Jason growls for the umpteenth time, finally stepping between Tim and his bookshelf.

Tim raises an eyebrow, and Dove doesn’t wake up when he tilts his head back slightly. “Yes?” he asks, acknowledging Jason’s attempts for the first time with a bland tone. “You need something?”

“Yes,” Jason growls, his fingers spasming against his thigh. “Answers!”

Tim shrugs, “Sure,” then he fucking fucks off around Jason to inspect his bookshelf again.

Before he can turn around, he hears the tell-tale sound of his bookshelf sliding. He whirls around just in time to see Tim bring his hand down from the keypad and slide into the staircase.

“Hey!” Jason snarls, charging after him. “The fuck you think you're doing?!”

“Getting to a decent computer, obviously. This is kind of private stuff, don’t you think?”

“And how do you know? Crow said They didn’t tell anyone!” Tim turns around with an unimpressed stare, Dove fluffing up atop his head as she looks up at Trinket flying into the room.

“I don’t know what _private_ stuff Crow wanted me to deliver,” Tim says. “All I know is I’m supposed to give you this–” he holds out a drive in his hand he grabbed from his backpack “–and log it into your secret computer behind the bookshelf so it doesn’t take out your whole system, and then I can leave. Simple.”

“Actually,” Tim starts again, making an aborted move to turn around, continuing to glare defiantly up at Jason. “I don’t even know who you are!” He throws his hands up, lips pulling back into a snarl. “So would you please let me do my _job_?!”

Jason takes a step back, watching as Tim stomps over and sits down at his computer and starts typing rapidly. Dove caws, pulling at his hair, but Tim ignores it. He isn’t looking around and snooping, he’s just staring straight ahead.

Well, now Jason feels like an asshole. Tim sure as hell hasn’t done anything bad toward him, and Crow trusts him enough.

“Look–”

“Save it,” Tim snaps, eyes hard as he spins around. There’s a file sitting unopened on his screen. “You’ve clearly shown me what you think of me, and I’d rather not be cussed at more if you don’t mind.”

Tim stands up, pushing the chair back. “I’ll show myself out, _sir_.”

There’s nothing Jason could possibly do before Tim disappears up the stairs and Trinket hisses at him from his desk. Jason thinks this is the first time he’s felt even a hint of guilt since his dip in the Lazarus Pit. He doesn’t like it one bit.

Of course, it’s not like he can do anything about it now. He has some files to look at, and it’s not like he’ll see Tim again. Gotham is a big city.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
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*  
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Jason’s heart sinks, bile bubbles up in the back of his throat, and his vision is tinted green.

Videos from odd angles flash across the screen.

Bruce, Dick, Alfred, and Babs all standing in the rain in front of his grave.

Bruce, dressed as Batman, beating people nearly to death with the timestamps dating for months.

News articles about Bruce becoming a problem. GPD reports of trying to bring him in.

Bruce, as Batman, making careless mistake upon careless mistake.

Babs recovering from being paralyzed with Dick by her side.

A girl with blond hair dressed up in a crappy purple suit traversing Gotham’s night alone and painfully unprepared.

Two crows, Copper (because he doesn’t know what Repl– Stephanie calls her crow) and Algo {pronounced All-go} leading the current Robin to Bruce.

Snippets from inside the cave of Stephanie training harder and harder, of Bruce being an ass, and of the memorial Bruce stands in front of before he leaves as Batman. A case with Jason’s old Robin suit inside.

More and more evidence that Bruce was _destroyed_ after Jason died. He didn’t move on right away. Crow was the one who brought them together. Bruce hadn’t wanted another Robin.

But Crow has one thing highlighted, enlarged, and bolded again and again.

**_Batman NEEDS a Robin. A light to his darkness, a smile to his frown, a laugh to his growl. Without it, Gotham cannot rally behind him, and without it, the man behind the mask falls deeper and deeper into his own darkness._ **

And Jason? Jason _crumbles_ under this new knowledge, under this new reality. But his resolve does not.

Batman DOESN’T need a joker, though. He may claim Gotham needs the balance of Batman and Joker, but there is plenty of madness to go around. Contact this number if you want to join me in ridding this world of a monster. (###)###-####.  
—The Crow

*  
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*

Message Sent to (###)###-####  
 _I’m in_

**Author's Note:**

> As most of my things, I have forgone thinking "you are already doing too much as is" and "dude, you literally just started making this, get more done first" as my brain instead went " _I'm doing it and posting it, you can't stop me! I am dependent on this praise to continue functioning!_ ", which means this will be slow to update.
> 
> Sorry my lovelies, I hate my brain and inability to be patient as much as you!


End file.
